


The Last Judgement

by homecoming



Category: American Idiot - Green Day/Armstrong
Genre: M/M, johnny has a religious crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 11:31:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4477658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homecoming/pseuds/homecoming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johnny's led into temptation and evil. Guess all those times he recited the Lord's Prayer backfired on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Judgement

Johnny was desperate.  
  
Not the, like, horny-in-the-middle-of-the-night-so-you-whack-off-to-shitty-amateur-porn-even-though-you-can-hear-your-stepdad-watching-tv-downstairs desperate, or the you-want-to-get-drunk-but-your-mom’s-dresser-is-dry-so-you’ll-just-drink-cough-medicine-and-hope-you-don’t-trip-too-badly desperate. He wished he was that easy off. Instead, he had the heart rate of a hummingbird, his fingers couldn’t stop twitching and he was so restless that the bus driver had given him a look like he was on crack or something. The worst part of it wasn’t the fever, or the stomach cramps that made him double over every few steps, or the sweaty palms that he rubbed onto his jeans every few seconds. It was the fact that he knew exactly why he felt this way. It was the fact that St Jimmy couldn’t be tracked down, that the city shifted and changed like magic and where his apartment once was was now an abandoned lot or a parking garage or a Starbucks. He would get off at the stop where St Jimmy lived and it would be home to a couple of bums or a couple of Hondas or a couple of business men instead of the good old dealer he needed to visit.  
  
“God fuckin’ damn it,” he muttered, dragging himself along the damp streets, trying to hold in his vomit. It was almost dawn and he hadn’t eaten for God knew how long, but his stomach was churning so badly that swallowing rapidly wouldn’t stop the bile from rising in his throat. He limped down the nearest alleyway as he felt the sun begin to lighten the sky around the edges, holding onto the brick wall to his right weakly for support, not wanting the face of the city to see him as hungry as he was. “Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy,” he said to no one in particular, squeezing his eyes shut as he briefly considered clicking his heels and wishing for him to show up, bringing his Easter basket of stamp bags. But the city was a jigsaw puzzle and the pieces rarely fit, especially when he wanted them to, and he wasn’t sure whose doing that was.  
  
“Johnny,” came a voice, sounding as if it could have come from above him, below him, to either side of him, yet he knew it belonged to one man and one man only. He blinked open his eyes, the morning light reflecting off of the side of the building and burning him blind, and it took him a moment to adjust before he realized that the answer to his prayers was standing in front of him, silhouetted against the early light.  
  
“Quit runnin’ from me,” Johnny croaked. He hadn’t spoken in a while, years maybe, he wasn’t quite sure, but his mouth was full of sand and he could feel it spill out a little bit more at every word he spoke. Swallowing dryly, he broke into a shaky grin that split the skin on his lips and wet his tongue with blood. “You – you bastard.”  
  
St Jimmy chuckled his St Jimmy chuckle and took Johnny by the hands, pulling him off of his support wall and forcing him to lean against him so he didn’t careen over onto the cement waiting below. “I ain’t runnin’,” he replied as smooth as smooth could be, looking Johnny up and down through hawk eyes ringed with his usual jet black eyeliner. “You just weren’t lookin’ hard enough.”  
  
That was bullshit, Johnny thought. Absolute bullshit. He looked hard. Real hard. In fact, he was pretty sure that he’d legitimately worn out the soles of his old high tops lugging himself around, hoping to exchange even one word with St Jimmy. He lifted a leg and tried to mock kick St Jimmy in his leg but ultimately failed, his body feeling so weak he could barely bend his knees. Still, he wheezed out a laugh. “Ain’t true. I knew I needed to talk to you, and you’re the one not showin’. You’re a bad man, Saint. You don’t just disappear on no one like that.”  
  
St Jimmy obviously knew how desperate Johnny was, because St Jimmy knew everything. Still holding onto Johnny’s hands, he began to pull him forwards, in the direction of Hell if Johnny knew. But he hoped it was his apartment; there was nothing Johnny wouldn’t do at the moment to sit on that torn old mattress on the floor of St Jimmy’s eclipsed room. “Naw, Johnny, you ain’t listenin’ to me, as usual,” St Jimmy replied as Johnny stumbled along after him like he was a mother duck. “You spent all your time with that girl. Now your body and your brain’s payin’ for it. I know what’s best for you, Johnny boy, and you gotta stop shuttin’ me out if you wanna feel real high and not real low.”  
  
“A’ight,” Johnny said compliantly. What was he going to do, argue? He didn’t have the energy for that, not now, and he didn’t want to risk pissing St Jimmy off and having him ghost away again. Johnny blinked and he was in St Jimmy’s apartment, with the stained off-white walls and the black curtains drawn over the shattered windows, blocking any of the fresh morning light that begged to filter in through the screen. There were stains on St Jimmy’s mattress now from Johnny’s sweaty hands clutching at it and Johnny wouldn’t be surprised if he had thrown up somewhere, but he wasn’t entirely sure, because he couldn’t remember how he got here, let alone coming in the door. He pushed himself against the wall and let the back of his head rest against it as he pulled off his hoodie, pulling his cross necklace out of his shirt in the process and not bothering to tuck it back against his chest as he let his hoodie fall to the ground.  
  
St Jimmy ambled back in, his usual tools of the trade in his hands, and gave Johnny a piercing glance before sitting down cross legged in front of him. He was silent as he cooked up, watching Johnny watch the flame of his lighter intensely. Desperate. Johnny still was desperate, even more so now that what he knew he needed was right in front of him; he licked his lips dryly and held out his arm as Jimmy put the needle in between his teeth and tied him off with his belt with his free hands. Nothing needed to be said; St Jimmy knew Johnny would pay, and Johnny knew it would be good. With his right hand St Jimmy picked up the needle and held it to Johnny’s skin, and Johnny sucked in a breath in anticipation.  
  
“What’s this?” St Jimmy broke the silence, lifting his left hand and grasping the cross on Johnny’s necklace in his fist without having stuck Johnny with the needle.  
  
“I – I don’t know,” Johnny nearly gasped, the words being the first ones that came to his mind. He knew St Jimmy didn’t like that necklace, but it was precious to him, the only material possession of his other than his guitar that he truly loved. Why hadn’t St Jimmy stuck him? His heart was racing so hard he wasn’t confident that it was beating at all.  
  
“You don’t know?” St Jimmy nearly growled, eyes searching Johnny’s, making a chill run through his spine. “I think you do know, Johnny. And trust me, boy, you don’t need it.”  
  
“It’s, uh, it’s mine, Saint,” Johnny stammered out. He couldn’t figure out what St Jimmy was so concerned about, and why now, of all times, when Johnny was practically throwing himself at St Jimmy for that needle? “My dad-“  
  
“Shut the fuck up ‘bout your daddy,” St Jimmy hissed, pulling on the cross sharply and making Johnny snap forward as he did. “You believe in God, Johnny? Is that it? You pray to your God, you kneel for Him at bedtime?”  
  
So that was it. So St Jimmy had a vendetta against Christianity, or something, that was all that was going on here. Maybe he just didn’t want a religious argument starting, or maybe he was brought up a different way. “I mean, yeah, I guess, or whatever,” Johnny said, swallowing once and then a couple more times to keep his voice from getting too whiny. He was trying real hard not to sound like a pussy or anything, but he knew lying to St Jimmy would be futile. “I grew up raised in the Church. I believe in Him, yeah.”  
  
“No, you don’t,” St Jimmy told him. Johnny couldn’t do anything but stare; St Jimmy had him cornered, his cross in his fist and a needle tantalizingly close to his veins. “You don’t believe in your God no more.” When he didn’t get a word out of Johnny, he wiggled the needle in his right hand once to attract his attention towards it. “Say it. Your God isn’t real.”  
  
“I’m not going to say that, Saint,” Johnny said quietly, like he was letting out a breath and nothing more. His blood was cold; what was St Jimmy trying to get him to admit? So many questions were running through his mind it was spinning more than usual. That was a shitty thing to say by any means, that could get him in trouble with all sorts of people, but mostly his own morality.  
  
“Say it,” St Jimmy repeated, harsher than before; a command. A command that had to be obeyed, or Johnny would get denied the needle, and he’d be left to rot in this hellish apartment he suddenly feared. “Say it now: ‘my God is not real’.”  
  
“My-” Johnny said. He imagined the words were being pulled out of his lungs by St Jimmy’s own hands, as they practically were; his callused hands, with the scarred knuckles, leaving chipped nail polish paint down his windpipe. He needed that needle more than he’d ever needed anything in his entire life. He needed that needle more than he needed the comfort of believing he’d be able to see his dad again in Heaven, and that was the truth. “-God isn’t real.”  
  
“Again,” St Jimmy said, a little gentler.  
  
“My God isn’t real,” Johnny repeated, and St Jimmy smiled a kind smile and stuck him with the needle. Relief spread through his body like a wildfire and he rested his head back again, his eyes slipping shut as he waited for liquid dreams to infect his system. He could feel St Jimmy dropping the belt from his arm and gently kissing the bullseye fresh in the crook of his elbow, and then came St Jimmy’s whisper, right next to his ear.  
  
“I’m your God now, Johnny. I’m your God.”


End file.
